Fast food joints have been around since the early 1960s. The increase in the number of fast food franchises has caused the market to become saturated. The same tried and true mainstays at most fast food places simply aren’t bringing in the revenue that they once did. This is causing quite a panic for fast food executives who are always creating new meal ideas and testing them out in test markets to see whether they will succeed or fail in the bigger markets of North America. One such example is the recent success of KFC’s Double Down sandwich which got as much media hype for its sodium content and number of calories as it did for its successful marketing campaign. Customers were impressed enough that it helped to increase KFC’s quarterly profits and became one of the top ten new menu items for fast food joints in 2010. Unfortunately, not every new food item becomes a massive success as you will see in some of the examples that we provide below.
Burger King Enormous Omelet Sandwich
-Breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day but I don’t think that’s what Burger King executives had in mind when they created this sandwich. It’s not a good start when the breakfast sandwich has more calories over Burger King’s Whopper. The problem with this sandwich was that it simply wasn’t tasty at all. The sandwich had bacon, cheese, sausage and yet nothing came together and tasted as if you just took all of these foods and piled them together on a bun. The only thing that this sandwich had going for it was that it was bigger than any other breakfast sausage which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The sandwich was discontinued in the USA but is still sold in select international markets.
Arch Deluxe
-McDonald’s introduced this burger to the world in 1996. McDonald’s executives thought that being a kiddie place was sucky and came up with a new burger that would appeal to adults of all ages. The new burger had a secret mustard and mayonnaise and peppered bacon and was marketed as being a gourmet burger rather than your average plain old McDonald’s burger. The burgers tasted good but were priced a few bucks more than other burgers such as the Big Mac and the Quarter Pounder and customers weren’t interested in paying more for an above average burger. The company spent over 300 million$ on research and development and it has since become one of McDonalds’ biggest failures to date.
Frito Burrito
-The Taco Bell Frito Burrito was basically a chilly cheese burrito mixed with Frito brand corn chips. I’m not quite sure what the pleasure of adding corn chips to burritos is but for 99 cents they were popular enough to warrant several online petitions and Facebook groups dedicated to bringing back the food item to Taco Bell’s menu. Aside from the Southwest USA,drug users and drunken weirdos at 1:00 am in the morning; the tacos never really caught on with the rest of the USA who didn’t understand the appeal of adding corn chips to their tacos. Taco Bell still sells these tacos for a limited time every few years so grab one when it becomes available if you enjoy corn chips mixed with tacos.
Hula Burger
-The Hula Burger was an early invention from Mcdonalds creator Ray Kroc. Religion was taken a lot more seriously in the 1960s and many Catholics would abstain from eating meat during lent. Ray Kroc came up with a meatless burger that had a slice of grilled pineapple rather than a beef patty to try and gain more customers during lent. Naturally, grilled pineapple wasn’t a very successful alternative to an old fashioned burger and the sales of Hula burgers quickly dwindled. Instead, another franchise owner in Cincinnati,Ohio came out with the Filet-O-Fish for the same religious reasons and it’s been on a Mcdonalds menu still to this day.
KFC Chicken Liver
-I should start off by saying that people are in love with these things. Chicken livers and Chicken gizzards are popular menu items in the deep south and in specific regions across the United States. The main appeal seems to be that it’s deep fried and nice and crispy like most fried foods. I think that if you took an old shoe and proceeded to deep fry it – it would probably taste delicious. This seems to be a part of the chicken that would easily be thrown into the garbage but has found a new life being deep fried much in the same way that chicken wings were once discarded before they were dipped in delicious buffalo and bbq sauces. This is one of those menu items you’ll either love or hate. You can still find this item in select regions of the United States but it depends on the specific KFC franchise as not all KFCs sell these items.
Friendly’s Grilled Cheese Burger Melt
-Remember when the biggest innovation with hamburger buns was putting sesame seeds on the top? Friendly’s restaurants have outdone themselves by using two grilled cheese sandwiches as the buns for your burger. The burger comes to a nice weight of 1500 calories and over 2090 mg of sodium. There’s no special sauce involved so this burger is more of a novelty item that doesn’t look like it will be around for much longer. If you’re bored, simply make a burger and slap two grilled cheese sandwiches on the top and bottom of the burger, throw in some condiments and you’re good to go.
Caviar Burger
-This burger is sold at the restaurant Serendipity3 in New York City. The burger not only contains caviar but also features cucumber slices and sour cream. This very same restaurant serves a 25 000$ dessert so for 20$ you’re getting a bargain with this menu item. Caviar is a very rare and expensive food by itself so you won’t be seeing these burgers around any fast food burger joints for a long time. We don’t see the appeal of putting caviar on a burger as this doesn’t hold the same surf and turf appeal like having a steak with shrimps on the side. This burger will forever be a novelty item but might catch on at Asian restaurants that have more of an interest in exotic sea food than we do over here.
That’s all that we have so far in our first list of fast food failures. In our next article, we will take a look at some more big test failures as we take a look at the McPizza, the BellBeefer, Ihop Pancake Stackers, Camel Burgers and many more fast food failures.
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